While they were shyly getting into the suits, she donned her own, a little scalloped apron effect, with cross-strapped sandals, and a silk bandanna knotted round her head.
She glanced about and saw Big Bill Petticoat beaming with proud glee at his wife's social success, and looking lovely himself in a black satin one-piece, with jet shoulder straps.
For a second Warble could see only Petticoat's pink cheeks and perfected eyebrows. Then she shook off the spell and keyed up.
“We're going to have an obstacle race,” she announced, “all over the house. You must follow me, wherever I go. I shall lead you a dance! And then I shall come last to the lake in the front hall, and whoever is nearest me there, will be rewarded.”
Yet even as she spoke, she overheard Trymie whispering to Iva Payne, “Yes, I believe that the new art era into which we are now slipping, will worship beauty for itself alone, and that art, sublimated by—”
She turned away, sick at heart.
Why bother, her tortured soul cried out. Yet the irrepressible impulse of reform egged her on and it was a perfectly good egg.
She flew past Petticoat, only pausing to shout, “Like it all, my tramp? Yes, it is an expensive party.”
Then she led her followers a mad race. Sliding down banisters, squeezing into dumb waiters; crawling under beds and out the other side; jumping in and out again of bathtubs full of perfumed water. Out of windows, in at scuttles. Through booby-traps of half-open doors, on the lintel of which were perched pans full of live crabs or little boxes of mice.
On rushed the horde, Mrs. Givens panting from over exertion, Goldie Leathersham limping because of a crab hanging to his great toe.